Cold War Cuban Spies in the USA in the 1980s – The Case of Ana Montes

From the 1980s American Ana Montes supplied the Communist Cuban government with very valuable information. During the 1980s she helped Cuba support communist insurgencies in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and she continued to help Fidel Castro’s Cuba even after the end of the Cold War. Scott Rose explains.

You can read past articles in the series about spies who shared American atomic secrets with the Soviet Union (read more here), the 1950s “Red Scare” (read more here), and the American who supplied the Soviets with secrets in the 1980s (read more here).

The mugshot of Ana Montes after her arrest.

Throughout the Cold War and in the years afterward, the United States has had to combat spies who were either giving or selling information to America’s enemies. The majority of the cases involved individuals who were aiding the Soviet Union, as the Soviets had a powerful and proven espionage network around the world. Most observers probably wouldn’t think of the small Caribbean nation of Cuba as a country capable of carrying out successful spying operations against the U.S. However, the Cuban intelligence services were vastly underestimated, and they were able to acquire top-secret information from an American mole named Ana Montes for nearly two decades. 

The Makings of a Spy

Ana Montes was one of four children born to U.S. Army doctor Alberto Montes and his wife, Emilia. The family moved several times during Ana’s early years before settling in Maryland, where Alberto became a well-regarded psychiatrist. While Dr. Montes undoubtedly helped many people, he was at times cruel to his children, losing his temper and beating them with a belt. This abuse had emotional effects on Ana, as she became distant and aloof at a young age. Years later, her sister, who was only a year older, would remark that she never really knew or felt very close to Ana. One of the effects of having an authoritarian father was that she seemed to gravitate toward those who were less powerful, or “underdogs.” The parents would divorce while Ana was in her teens.

In spite of her turbulent home life, Montes was an excellent student. During her high school years, she was viewed by her peers as extremely intelligent and perpetually serious, but this paid off as she graduated near the top of her class, with a 3.9 grade point average. She would move on to the University of Virginia, where her academic success continued. While at Virginia, she got to participate in a study-abroad program in Spain for a year.

It was during her time in Spain that Montes began to harbor anti-U.S. sentiments. She began a relationship with a fellow student in Spain, a young Marxist from Argentina. This was her first real boyfriend, and to a certain extent, she fell under his leftist spell. He often told her of American support for authoritarian governments in Latin America, such as those of Somoza in Nicaragua and Pinochet in Chile. Together they attended anti-American rallies, and in time she came to genuinely buy into her boyfriend’s theories and adopt them as her own. Eventually she returned to Virginia, earning a degree in foreign affairs in 1979.

Montes’ brother and older sister both worked for the FBI, and after graduating, she took a job as a typist at the Department of Justice. At night, she attended graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, and eventually she obtained her masters’ degree in Advanced Foreign Studies. During her time at Johns Hopkins, one of the main topics of discussion was the civil war in Nicaragua. Montes detested the fact the United States was sending aid to the Contra forces that were fighting against Nicaragua’s socialist Sandinista government. She performed well at the Department of Justice, and in 1984 she received a high-level security clearance, passing an FBI background check in the process.

While at Johns Hopkins, Cuban intelligence services identified Ana Montes as a potential spy. A former Cuban agent later stated that the Cubans have often looked to find American students with strong political leanings who appear destined for government jobs. Reportedly, one of Montes’ schoolmates at Hopkins was already in contact with the Cubans, and set up a dialogue with Ana. At first, Montes was asked to help the Cubans with small tasks, such as translations. However, the Cubans knew the passion Montes had for the Sandinistas, and when they asked her for American information about Nicaragua, they had pressed the right button. She dove in headfirst, and by the end of 1984, she had become a major Cuban asset.

No Turning Back

In early 1985, Montes made a secret trip to Cuba to receive intelligence training, and disguised herself by wearing a wig. The Cubans knew that they had an agent with star potential in Montes, and they went out of their way to make sure she got a favorable impression of Cuba and its government while she was there. They even introduced her to a young Cuban gentleman who showed her around the country’s cities, beaches, and countryside. During her training in Cuba she learned how to decipher coding and make information drops. They taught her how to pass a lie detector test if she came under any suspicion.

Ana’s Cuban handlers urged her to begin applying for government jobs that would give her more access to the most highly sensitive American intelligence. Not long after returning to Washington, she was hired by the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Cubans could not have been much happier. Other than the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) handles more classified data on foreign governments than any other sector of the American government. The DIA analyzes intelligence and informs American leaders, all the way up to the President, of the military capabilities and intentions of foreign governments, and most of the information is acquired from human spies. From the beginning of her time at the DIA, Montes misled her superiors and much of the government by making Cuban espionage threats seem minimal when they were actually very serious. She also downplayed Cuba’s role in the civil wars taking place in Nicaragua and El Salvador. In truth, the Cubans had thousands of military advisors on the ground in both countries.

Montes seemed to be the perfect employee, for both the United States and Cuba. At her DIA job, she displayed a steely efficiency, and was known for being unapproachable by her co-workers. The intelligence community tends to be very tight, but Montes remained a virtual loner while her superiors recognized her obvious intelligence. She could turn on the charm, but only when it was helpful for serving her purposes. At night, she worked at her other job, as a Cuban spy. Using a radio, she received numeric messages from Cuban intelligence, which she then decoded with Cuban decryption software on her personal computer. She sent information back in the same way, but Montes was too smart to bring classified papers home from the DIA. Instead, she was actually able to memorize the content of highly sensitive documents at work before translating it into numeric codes for the Cubans. Sometimes she would pass information to Cuban agents at crowded restaurants in Washington. All the while, the DIA considered Montes to be the ideal employee, and she received several performance-based promotions.

In time, Montes was named chief DIA analyst for El Salvador and Nicaragua, and at that point she started doing serious damage to American operations. In El Salvador, the American-backed government was fighting a civil war against Marxist rebels who were receiving support from Cuba and the Soviet Union. The United States supplied military equipment to the Salvadoran army, and covertly sent a Special Forces unit to help advise and train the government forces. In early 1987, the DIA sent Montes to El Salvador, where she visited the hidden Special Forces base. After she left El Salvador, Montes gave the location of the base to the Cubans. Shortly thereafter, Cuban-led Salvadoran guerrilla fighters attacked the base, and an American Green Beret was killed in the ensuing firefight. Amazingly, Montes eluded suspicion even though she was one of only a handful of people who had even known the base had existed.

Eventually, the civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua ended, and American intelligence efforts in those countries were scaled back. Ana Montes was put in charge of political and military intelligence on Cuba, and her Cuban handlers couldn’t believe their luck. A Cuban spy actually being put in charge of analyzing the Pentagon’s intelligence on Cuba seemed almost too good to be true. She promptly gave the Cubans the names of four American spies in Cuba, and all four were arrested. Still, Montes was not considered as a source for the intelligence leaks. Her bosses at the DIA were dazzled by her knowledge of Cuban affairs, chalking it up to her tireless work ethic. They even nicknamed her “The Queen of Cuba,” never knowing just how fitting the moniker was. During the early years of the Bill Clinton Administration, Montes fed misinformation about Cuba all the way to the White House. She led the American government into believing Cuba’s posture toward the U.S. was purely defensive, and that the Castro regime was nothing more than a harmless annoyance.

In 1996, a DIA co-worker became suspicious of Montes, and reported concerns about her. However, these concerns couldn’t be substantiated, as they were based entirely on the co-worker’s “gut feeling.” Montes was questioned, but in short time, the situation blew over. The next year, she even received a Certificate of Distinction for her performance from George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. However, Ana was approaching mid-life and having thoughts of settling down to have a family. Her role as a spy had made it difficult for her to have relationships, but the Cubans had no intention of letting her retire. They sent her a Cuban lover, but after a few days Montes lost interest in the gentleman.

The Price of Spying

The FBI busted a Cuban spy ring called “Wasp” in Miami in 1998, and one of the arresting agents was Montes’ sister Lucy. Both Ana and the Cubans were horrified, and for several months, she heard nothing from her handlers. Worse, she became paranoid about getting caught, suffering through bouts of depression and panic. She started seeing a psychiatrist, although she couldn’t tell her doctor the true reason for her mental and emotional state. By the end of the year, the situation had died down and she was contacted by the Cubans once again. She even managed to receive a fellowship to the National Intelligence Council, and she was moved to CIA headquarters.

The FBI suspected there was an American government employee helping the Cubans, but the Bureau had little information to go on, other than suspecting the spy was using a Toshiba laptop. Eventually the FBI asked the DIA to look into the files of current and former employees. A DIA agent named Scott Carmichael led the investigation, and became convinced Montes was the spy. At first, the FBI rejected Carmichael’s theory, but in time it was decided to put Montes under surveillance, and she was observed making suspicious phone calls from pay phones. While examining her financial records, it was seen that she had bought a Toshiba laptop at a computer store in Virginia. The FBI obtained search authorization, and went inside Ana’s apartment one weekend while she was out of town. They found the laptop, and copied the hard drive. Later, they were able to sort through her purse while she was in a meeting at work. They found codes and a New York phone number that was traced to Cuban operatives.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the FBI decided it was time to act. It was feared that Montes would supply information that the Cubans could in turn relay to the Taliban. She had completed her fellowship and was back at the DIA, and she was called to a meeting at the DIA Inspector General’s office. When she got there, two FBI agents were waiting for her. When they told her they were investigating a potential Cuban spy, her nerves betrayed her. She began sweating profusely, and her neck broke out in red patches. The agents had expected Montes to try to explain away any suspicions they had, but instead she asked for a lawyer. At that point, they placed her under arrest, charging her with conspiracy to commit espionage.

Ana Montes could have been given the death penalty for her actions, but she accepted a plea agreement and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. She remained defiant, insisting that her actions came as a result of America’s “unfair treatment” of Cuba, and remarking, “ Some things are worth going to prison for.”

The Cubans tried to free Montes by offering an exchange. Years earlier, an American named Assata Shakur had been convicted of killing a New Jersey State Trooper, but Shakur escaped from prison and somehow made it to Cuba. Fidel Castro’s government gave asylum to Shakur, and she still lives there. However, the Cubans offered to return Shakur to the United States in exchange for Montes, an offer that was rejected by the U.S. State Department. Montes is still serving her sentence at a maximum security prison in Fort Worth, Texas. The prison is the home of some of the most notorious female criminals in the United States, and Montes serves her time in solitary confinement.

What do you think of Ana Montes’ actions? Let us know below.

References

Pablo De Llano, “No Sign of Release for the Last Cuban Spy in a U.S. Jail” El Pais, March 8, 2017

Jim Popkin, “Ana Montes Did Much Harm Spying for Cuba. Chances Are, You Haven’t Heard of Her” The Washington Post, April 18, 2013

Scott W. Carmichael, True Believer: Inside the Investigation and Capture of Ana Montes, Cuba’s Master Spy, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2007

Brian Latell, “New Revelations about Cuban Spy Ana Montes” The Miami Herald, August 2, 2014

How Cold War era Soviet Spies Shared American Secrets and Helped the USSR Obtain Nuclear Weapons

In the early days of the Cold War, during the years after World War II, spies became a key weapon for the USSR and USA. But perhaps the most important spies were those American-born Soviet spies who provided secrets about America’s nuclear weapons program, the Manhattan Project, to the Soviet Union. Scott Rose tells us about Cold War nuclear weapons spying in the USA.

Lona Cohen, an American-born Soviet spy on a Russian postage stamp.

Morris Cohen, an American-born Soviet spy on a Russian postage stamp.

In summer this year, an alleged Russian spy named Maria Butina was arrested in Washington, DC, where she currently awaits trial, charged with conspiring to act as an agent for a foreign government. However, Russian espionage in the United States is not a new phenomenon, actually beginning in earnest during the Soviet era, particularly during World War Two. During the war and the years immediately afterward, Russian spies in the U.S. gained unprecedented access to the American atomic research community.

Soviet spying took on all sorts of forms through the years, from homegrown Russian agents who took on American appearances to American citizens who betrayed their country and stole highly sensitive information, including the data needed to build the Soviet Union’s first atomic weapon.

The Race to Build the Bomb

The United States knew that Nazi Germany was actively trying to develop atomic power during World War Two. In 1942, the U.S., along with Great Britain and Canada, began what was called the Manhattan Project, with the purpose of building atomic weapons before the Germans could develop their own. The Soviets also started an atomic development program, though much smaller than the American project. The Soviet research team consisted of about 550 people; whereas the Manhattan Project at its peak employed over 130,000. With so much more money and manpower at work, the Americans were seemingly light years ahead of Soviet atomic research.

The Germans surrendered in April of 1945 without succeeding in building atomic weapons, and in July, the Manhattan Project tested its first atomic device at Los Alamos, New Mexico. On August 6th, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb. Three days later, the second bomb destroyed Nagasaki, and the Japanese surrendered six days later.  

The Soviets realized that the United States had become the world’s first superpower with its development of the atomic bomb. They also knew it would take many years to catch up with American atomic abilities, unless they gained access to the Manhattan Project’s research. Even before the war ended, the Soviets used espionage for the purpose of acquiring America’s atomic secrets.

The scientists that worked on the Manhattan Project included some of the top researchers and mathematicians from America, Britain, and Canada. The Soviets aimed to glean information from scientists with leftist leanings, and in time these efforts bore fruit. In the 1940s, a young American from Philadelphia named Harry Gold began working for the Soviet Union. His orders were to make contact with a Manhattan Project scientist named Klaus Fuchs, and to move atomic information from Fuchs to the Soviets. Born in Germany, Fuchs had emigrated to Britain, becoming a citizen there. By the time he reached his early 30s, Fuchs was respected as a brilliant physicist, and his work would contribute greatly to the American development of the atomic bomb. Fuchs gave critical information on the Manhattan Project’s research to Gold during the war, unbeknownst to the Americans. In 1946, he returned to Britain to work for the new British atomic program, and he continued to pass information to Soviet agents in Britain.

Another of Gold’s sources was David Greenglass, a U.S. Army machinist from New York who had worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Greenglass had been recruited into espionage by his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs were committed Communist Party members, and some of the information Greenglass collected was passed to them. They in turn passed the same information along to their Soviet handlers.

The Soviets had taken several German atomic scientists back to the U.S.S.R. after the war, and although the Germans had failed to produce an atomic bomb, these scientists were a huge boost to the Soviet atomic program. With the accelerated pace of Soviet research, and stolen atomic secrets from America, the Soviets were able to make up ground quickly. Still, America was shocked when the Soviets tested their first atomic device in August of 1949. Now the world had two superpowers instead of one.

The American military distrusted the Soviets, even during the war, when the two countries were allies, and the U.S. suspected the Soviets were in the business of using Americans to gather intelligence. In 1943, the Army launched the Venona Project, a program using complex mathematics to decode secret messages from the Soviets to their operatives in other nations. Venona was so secret that President Franklin Roosevelt didn’t even know about the program when it commenced.

The Dominos Fall

One month after the Soviet atomic test, Venona hit a home run when it identified Klaus Fuchs as a Soviet spy. This information was passed along to British intelligence, and Fuchs was questioned about his activities. Fuchs denied having ever been a spy, and was not held in custody. However, in January of 1950, Fuchs contacted the British authorities and confessed to having passed atomic information to the Soviets through Harry Gold. Immediately arrested and put on trial for espionage, Fuchs was convicted, sentenced to 14 years in prison, and stripped of his British citizenship. He served just over nine years before being released early for “good behavior.” Upon release, Fuchs left Britain for East Germany, where he got married and went to work for that country’s nuclear research program, before passing away in 1988 at the age of 76.

When Fuchs was arrested in 1950, his confession led to the arrest of Harry Gold in the United States. Gold was interrogated, and confessed to having been a Soviet spy since 1934; he admitted to passing Fuchs’ atomic information to the Soviet General Consul. During Gold’s confession, he spilled the beans about his other espionage contacts, David Greenglass and the Rosenbergs. At the beginning of the year when Fuchs was arrested, Julius Rosenberg had given Greenglass $5,000 in order for Greenglass to escape to Mexico with his wife and children. Instead, the Greenglasses had stayed put and used the money to hire a lawyer. In June of 1950, the FBI arrested David Greenglass, charging him with espionage. 

Not long after Greenglass was arrested, he gave up his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg, and at first, Greenglass denied his sister Ethel’s involvement in the spy ring. A couple of months later, Greenglass changed his story and implicated his sister as well, claiming Ethel had typed the notes he had passed from the Manhattan Project. Greenglass stated that Ethel had originally recruited him to become a spy, after being persuaded by her husband Julius. One of the Rosenbergs’ assistants, Morton Sobell, was arrested while on the run in Mexico City, and he was extradited to stand trial along with the Rosenbergs.

The trial began in early March and lasted 3 weeks. Greenglass testified that he had given Julius Rosenberg illustrations of atomic bomb research, and Harry Gold testified that he had worked as a courier for the Rosenbergs, who never admitted their guilt. The couple and Sobell were convicted; while Sobell got a 30 year sentence and was sent to Alcatraz, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. Judge Irving Kaufman, during sentencing, claimed the Rosenbergs crime was “worse than murder”. He blamed the Rosenbergs for giving the Soviet Union access to atomic weapons, which he argued had led to the communist aggression in Korea that cost thousands of American lives.

Many people around the world felt the sentence was overly harsh. There was a worldwide campaign for clemency, and many leading artists, writers, and scientists of the day joined the movement. Even Pope Pius XII asked President Eisenhower to reduce the Rosenbergs’ sentence, but the president refused. After two years of appealing their sentence, the Rosenbergs were executed on July 19th, 1953, meeting their fate via the electric chair at New York’s Sing Sing prison. 

The other members of the spy ring were much luckier than the Rosenbergs. Sobell was released from prison in 1969 and wrote a book, spoke on the lecture circuit, and maintained his innocence for many years before finally admitting his guilt in 2008, claiming that by aiding the Soviets, he had simply “bet on the wrong horse.” Sobell is still alive and residing in New York at the age of 101. Harry Gold was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but didn’t serve even half of his sentence before being paroled. He died in 1972 and was buried in his hometown of Philadelphia. David Greenglass only served nine years in prison before returning to New York and changing his name. He gave an interview to the New York Timesin 1996, claiming he had exaggerated his sister Ethel’s involvement in the spy ring in order to protect his own wife from prosecution. During the rambling interview, Greenglass declared “My wife is more important to me than my sister. Or my mother or my father. OK?”

To Russia with Love 

The Rosenbergs were not the only American couple to help the Soviets attain atomic secrets. Another New York couple, Morris and Lona Cohen, were united by their Marxist ideologies, and proved to be valuable agents for the U.S.S.R. Morris had served in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, and he was recruited into Soviet intelligence at that time. Lona was an eager partner in her husband’s espionage activities, and the couple established contact with several Manhattan Project scientists. When Klaus Fuchs was arrested in Britain, the Cohens didn’t wait for the trail to lead back to New York, leaving immediately for the Soviet Union. In 1954, the childless Cohens re-emerged in London as “Peter and Helen Kroger”, operating a small antique book shop. They were also operating a new espionage network for the Soviets. Seven years after their arrival in England, the Cohens were caught with a houseful of spying equipment and arrested. Put on trial and convicted, luck would intervene for the “Krogers” in 1969, when they were traded to the Soviet Union for British prisoner Gerald Brooke. Many Britons criticized the exchange, claiming the Soviet Union should have been forced to pay a higher price for the Cohens, as by this time it was known that they were two of the most dangerous spies on the planet. They would live out the remainder of their lives in Russia, where they died in the early 1990s.

When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, old Soviet espionage files were opened that detailed the contributions made by spies to the Soviet atomic program. These files showed that while the Rosenbergs gave valuable information to the Soviets, the secrets gathered by the Cohens were most vital to Soviet development of the atomic bomb. Seemingly confirming the Cohens’ importance was the fact that during the last years of the Soviet Union’s existence, commemorative Soviet stamps were printed honoring both Morris and Lona Cohen. The honors bestowed on the couple in Russia seem an ironic twist, given the fact that these Americans did so much, in the name of idealism, to hurt their own country.

What do you think about Soviet spies in the USA during the Cold War? Let us know below.

References

Chester B. Hearn, Spies & Espionage: A Directory, Thunder Bay Press, 2006

Slava Katamidze, Loyal Comrades, Ruthless Killers: The Secret Services of the USSR 1917-1991, Barnes & Noble, 2003

Robert McFadden, “David Greenglass, the Brother who Doomed Ethel Rosenberg, Dies at 92”, The New York Times, October 14, 2014

Sam Roberts, “For First Time, Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits Spying for Soviets”, The New York Times, September 12, 2008

Allen Hornblum, The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb, Yale University Press, 2010

Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1995

Robert Chadwell Williams, Klaus Fuchs: Atom Spy, Harvard University Press, 1987